Vyjayanthi Rao at Urban Democracy Lab - NYU

Terreform co-director and new Managing Editor of Public Culture, Vyjayanthi Rao, will be presenting at Urban Democracy Lab's Engaged Urbanists Working Group this Monday, October 14.

Rao is an anthropologist and writer studying architecture, infrastructure and social life in large cities.  She has written several essays and have edited two books so far.  The first is Speculation Now: Essays and Artworks, which draws together multi-disciplinary reflections on speculation and speculative practices in contemporary life and artistic practices.  The second, titled Occupy All Street: Olympic Urbanism and Contested Futures in Rio de Janeiro, is a collection of essays exploring the spatial transformation of Rio in the shadow of the 2016 Olympic Games.  The book was launched at CUNY Graduate Center with David Harvey and the editors, Rao, Mariana Cavalcanti, and Bruno Carvalho. The event was chaired by Amy Chazkel, Associate Professor of History, CUNY, Queens College and the Graduate Center. It was sponsored by the Public Space Research Group, Graduate Center, City University of New York.

David Harvey talking now at the CUNY Graduate Center about Capital, the city, the Olympics & Rio de Janeiro pic.twitter.com/S7ccmSUhZK

— The PSRG (@thepsrg) December 1, 2016

See more from Terreform’s archive. From Storefront New York to HAND annual meeting, “The Center Cannot Hold” and the Nexus Between Urbanization.

OCCUPY ALL STREETS: OLYMPIC URBANISM AND CONTESTED FUTURES IN RIO DE JANEIRO

Bruno Carvalho, Mariana Cavalcanti and Vyjayanthi Rao Venuturupalli, Editors

Contributors: Bruno Carvalho, Mariana Cavalcanti with Julia O’Donnell and Lilian Sampaio, Gabriel Duarte with Renata Bertol, Beatriz Jaguaribe with Scott Salmon, Guilherme Lassance, Bryan McCann, Theresa Williamson, and Vyjayanthi Rao Venuturupalli

“Occupy All Streets is a brilliant and searing indictment of the injustice, violence, militarisation, elitism and mind-boggling waste inherent in planning and organizing Rio as host city of the 2016 Olympics.
Through punchy prose and superb visual material, its contributors expose the myths that sustain mega-event urbanism; draw out the deep histories of branding Rio as an aesthetically exceptional city; and, most important of all, explore the possibilities that exist for organizing megacities more justly.
An extraordinary book!”

— Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities and Society, Newcastle University, author of Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism

Zoned Out! in the New York Times

On the city’s rezoning plans for Inwood, “Manhattan’s Last Affordable Neighborhood”.

“Little did they expect the fight back, which has been incredibly vocal and active in all of the neighborhood,” said Tom Angotti, a professor emeritus of urban planning at Hunter College who wrote the 2016 book “Zoned Out! Race, Displacement, and City Planning in New York City.”

“In Inwood, it’s specifically the Dominican population that is going to be the most vulnerable,” Mr. Angotti said.

New York Times.

On Sunday, the Northern Manhattan Is Not For Sale coalition, which includes local residents and community groups like Centro Altagracio de Fe y Justicia as well as citywide organizations like the Metropolitan Council on Housing and Faith In New York, held a public forum to discuss the city's current rezoning plan for Inwood.

City Takes Time With Inwood Rezoning Process By Abigail Savitch-Lew, CityLimits, October 26, 2016.

ZONED OUT! RACE, DISPLACEMENT, AND CITY PLANNING IN NEW YORK CITY

Editors: Tom Angotti and Sylvia Morse

Contributors: Tom Angotti; Philip DePaolo; Peter Marcuse; Sylvia Morse; Samuel Stein

Last year’s conversation between Tom Angotti and Domingo Estevez, Inwood resident and community organizer. The event was held at Word Up: Community Bookshop.

The work continues! 💪 See also Zoned Out! Bushwick, Ridgewood, Gowanus, from the Left Forum to the Boiler, Rezone or Leave Alone? Northern Manhattan is Not for Sale. Resisting Displacement and Dispossession.

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UR (Urban Research), the imprint of Terreform, publishes progressive books about cities and their futures. Understanding that no single approach is adequate to the promise and problems of the urban, we publish a wide range of designs and analyses.

Vanessa Keith Interview in A People’s Climate Plan for New York City?

Architect and UR author, Vanessa Keith, was interviewed as part of Climate Action Lab’s ‘living document’, A People’s Climate Plan for New York City?:

It crystallizes a year-long series of workshops with activists, researchers, and artists intended to reimagine climate politics through the lens of the city as both the frontline impact zone and the source of grassroots alternatives informed by the imperatives of climate justice, eco-socialism, and decolonization.

Inspired in particular by Aurash Khawarzad's Upper Manhattan Project (which in turn has its roots in the 2015 WE ACT for Environmental Justice's Northern Manhattan Climate Action Plan), this pamphlet aims to promote ongoing conversation, organizing, and speculation about popular climate planning at a city-wide scale beyond the important yet limited version of the Green New Deal that has been recently adopted by the city with the Climate Mobilization Act.

Read the full document and give feedback!

A People’s Climate Plan for New York City? Released September 20, 2019 by Verso.

Earlier this year, Vanessa Keith, author of 2100: A Dystopian Utopia - The City After Climate Change gave a lunchtime lecture at CUNY Climate Action Lab (CAL). The event, organized by Ashley Dawson and Zeynep Oguz, brought together “activists, researchers, and artists to reimagine climate politics through the lens of the city as both the frontline impact-zone and the potential source of grassroots, artistic, and scientific alternatives informed by the principles of climate justice, for A People’s Plan for Climate Action for NYC”.

Watch videos of the day long event, which included UR authors, Vanessa Keith and Tom Angotti, on the Center for the Humanities - CUNY website.

"It's good to see that the onset of rapid global warming is nudging creative minds into action. Job one is to make sure we prevent as much change as possible, but that which we can no longer prevent will require us to adapt, and here are some provocative plans to stir your imagination!" — Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future